the long ago announced ripper master library with clients is close to release. will happen this year, more sure this month. its name can be either as above or xfrmaster.librtarys, which means eXterneal Format Rippers. What do you think?

It is written 100% in 68000 assembler, and is compattible to any amiga os. At this moment it supports 29 formats by 19 external clients and one internal client. The internal client supports "iff" and "amiga binary".

XFR provides both functions to check a file and to scan a memory or a file. It is built on an object orientated concept and the clients use taglists. there are other functions for converting and similar and a deep scan mode is distinguished from a flat scan mode.

Porting to other plattforms may be possible, though, includes support is now only for amiga assembler and some little c. The only manko is i cannot code c and you may help me here.

A pretty developer documentation is available in amigaguide format. Now programs have easy access to an extendable ammount of types of data that can be ripped. for exaple sound modules but not just modules intended.

Just let me know you opinions. I would like to see xfr implemented in voodoo-x by a button press.

regards,

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XFR is a library itself with its own clients. a library, that can be accessed from other programs.

making xfr recognicing xfr, xad and similar would mean to write a client that doors that in. this is not recommended, 'cause each separate system has its special features and all together can be best utilised from a main program and frontend which opens these librarys in some way.

aFilter is such a frontend for shell usage, where some formats of afilter and especially its unirip plugin are replaced now by xfrmaster.library and libs:xfr/.

afilter for this purpose has got a new plugin named xfr. surely anyone who can, may write a client for xfr, that pops in xfd or xad into xfr itself or vice versa. e.g. a xad client that scans and rips. i have been thinking on this for long periods of time and came to the conclusion, that it would be dificult because of the partial-file handling of xad and a missing ability to give a xad client a priority of execution. am i right? it would be much more flexible to make programs with graphical interfaces, that can use all these librarys.
voodoo-x is an example for such work and in my opinion it can be even better when it does use also xfd and xfr besides xad.

annother frontend of this kind i see in the deficon feature of the newer amiga os. i have seen that with amithlon. this program sorts default icons and functions like directory opus to files of a certain type on the workbench. you do not need a workbench replacement with this. deficon goes beyond just looking at the filename ending. like opus it can look into the files to recognice their formats. my great idea is to make DEFICON access the x libs and datatypes (if it doesnt use datatypes yet) for further special recognitions. (multiview does use datatypes)

The third frontend i know is the unpack utility in the new amiga os. it does use xad only. what about extending that?

Last but not least: eagleplayer. I started to make an eagleplayer-ripper plugin for aFilter and an eagleplayer genie that can access my own clients but failed. the eagle guys did not write back.

Afilter was the first real step to make the many separate tools one tool.

You ask about somehting like track to file. aFilter afaik is able to read tracks from a disk, as long they aren't long tracks. Can you be more specific what you want to perform?

Track2File (by Mr.larmer) is able to load a disk/file and then seek in it for any crunch id available with xfd lib. It even calculate PP20 data file size
I know aFilter can use xfd too.
My question was is xfr would be able to do the same. It seems a 3rd utility such as Voodoo-X should call itself xfr and then xfd.

BTW i've an old ripper wrote by a friend. Unfortunately i've no sources. He offer a nice feature such as adding your own header. Perhaps it could give you some idea about a GUI.

From the reading I think I understand what you are trying to do - separate the ripping part out of ExoticRipper/Jack the Ripper type programs. Is that the case?

What actual features or formats are you adding to this software which would make anybody want to use it over ExoticRipper? From memory Exotic Ripper could rip about 60 formats, if this library only does about 30 why would anybody use it instead of just loading up Exotic Ripper?

(Do not take offence, I am just wondering where this project is going. Perhaps you have thought of some vital features or new rip formats that are not in Exotic that I can't think of).

I am guessing programs like WRip by Bert Jahn could be modified to identify music modules by calling this library?

Its a shared libray w/ clients that can be accessed from any program like known from xfd. Its name will be XFR and there are people willing to create more and better clients and also gui-ed programs for it. Also its not only specified as a sound ripper. you may make it rip whatever you can. Though I state to sort crunchers to xfD.

I do not like exoticripper. It did not what I wantet it to do. And but to eagleplayer it wasn't shareable. However that was a hack and did not work in my system either. Besides, with exoticgui afaik only few features of exoticripper were performable.

For example with XFR you have the "xfrlist" utility, that shows you all supported formats in your dir.

i have just uploaded a source of the upcomming xfrscan tool. you may check it out for what it is alike but beware of assemble. its not working and some hours older than the newest. there is only one or two calls going straight to xfr itself in it and a great piece of 1.3 kick compatible work for processing a whole directory. http://otaku.onlinehome.de/xfrscan.asm